Teens cheer Prop. 64, making mom worry about marijuana legalization

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Though other ways to purchase are coming most of the transactions for purchasing pot in March at the OC3 Dispensary in Santa Ana was with cash. (File photo by Michael Goulding, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Woo hoo. Party on, dudes. Let’s all drive over to the head shop, buy bongs and get loaded.

Many of the teens who hang around my house are jumping for joy, because polls show marijuana will probably be legalized in California under the provisions of Proposition 64, on the ballot next week.

“Why don’t you say something about this in your column?” my friends have been pestering me for some time now. “This is just awful.”

See, we are parents of adolescents, and we know that the whole “21 and older” limitation on marijuana purchasing in the proposed new law is a joke.

It will be just as effective at stopping kids from obtaining weed as the “mature” rating on a box has been at stopping them from playing violent video games.

Can’t buy a horribly gruesome video game? Get your older brother to buy it for you.

Can’t legally buy weed in the countless shops that would appear everywhere after Prop. 64 takes effect on Jan. 1, 2018? Ask your brother to go in for you, or just stand in front and ask some random druggie to buy you a dime bag.

There’s research out there from numerous scientific studies suggesting that marijuana damages the brains of adolescents. It doesn’t just make them stupid for a few hours. It might make them stupider forever.

Seriously. As if they needed to lose more brain cells.

And the proposition allows billboards, event marketing and unlimited commercials on TV that tout marijuana use, as long as they aren’t specifically targeting kids under 21, according to a public health analysis of the measure from UC San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

Gee, so glad to know that Kermit and Miss Piggy won’t be firing one up soon, at least not in commercials.

“I don’t always get high, but when I do, I prefer Maui Wowee,” the guy with the red, bloodshot, unfocused eyes says, brushing off an ash that fell from his blunt, as he lies on the couch in my imaginary TV commercial, eating pot-laced chocolate in the clothes he’s worn since Tuesday.

Call me crazy, but I find it very confusing that we won’t allow commercials touting tobacco smoking on television, but cannabis is not subject to the same rules.

Lots of newspapers, including the one I work for, have endorsed Prop. 64, essentially saying that marijuana is here to stay, so we might as well make it legal, control and tax it.

But the California Association of Highway Patrolmen opposes this measure, because there’s no standard in it for measuring marijuana-impaired driving. (Not that stoners would ever drive under the influence. Heaven forbid.)

And it would allow convicted meth and heroin felons to be licensed in the industry. They won’t let Pete Rose back into baseball for betting on games, but they’ll let meth dealers run pot shops. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Think crime will go down once pot is legalized? Well, it didn’t in Colorado.

In an Oct. 12 letter to the No on 64 campaign, Denver District Attorney Mitchell R. Morrissey wrote the following: “Since the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado in 2013, traffic related marijuana deaths have increased 48%, marijuana related emergency room visits have increased 49%, and marijuana related calls to the poison center have increased 100%.”

Unfortunately, people who oppose legalization are being outspent 10-to-1 in this election, because marijuana is very big business, make no mistake about it.

Would-be shop owners, lawyers, farmers, lobbyists, people who make drug paraphernalia and edibles – there’s potentially billions of dollars to be made if you jump into the soon-to-be-frenzied legalized pot business, so you can imagine how they’re donating to get this initiative passed.

Since there’s little to no organized opposition, only moms like me – horrified but not politically active – are left to be wringing our hands.

I was a child of the ’60s and the ’70s. I still know former classmates who work at the copy center and live with their aging parents because they were always too busy getting high to get a life.

Realistically, all these folks already have medical marijuana licenses and make their way to the clinics regularly, to cure their headaches or back pain or whatever other lame excuse they used to get the doctor’s note.

This is the point at which I usually get 1,000 infuriated emails from stoners, telling me that medical marijuana has saved them from (fill in the blank) dire fate and how dare I criticize it?

Yes, there are a small number of people who do benefit medically, with glaucoma, or cancer or other chronic diseases.

But, come on. Sorry to be a buzzkill, but we all know people who have doctors’ notes because they’re addicts. All of us. Maybe even you.

Hey, potheads. Be happy. Soon, you’ll probably be able to puff away in your own home, legally, whenever you want. And even grow the stuff, too.

There’s no one to stop you except moms like me and groups like AAA of Southern California, the California Hospital Association, the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, the California Police Chiefs Association and the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs.

None of us is spending much money fighting it, so you’ll get your wish.

“Wake and bake,” as the kids say, which for us old fogeys means get faded as soon as you wake up. Better order that bong now, before they’re out of stock.